1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to code division multiaccess telecommunications systems and in particular to partly orthogonal multiple code trees.
2. Background of the Present Invention
In a Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) system, a user signal is spread with a wide frequency bandwidth by the use of an individual code and is transmitted in a common frequency band. The receiver detects a desired signal by a despreading process from the WCDMA signal and the individual code. The spreading codes used for a WCDMA system are chosen to have a relatively low cross-correlation between any two sequences in the set. The system is able to distinguish between different users, regardless if the users have a unique code that is orthogonal or non-orthogonal to the other codes. In the non-orthogonal case, correlating the received signal with a code signal from a certain user will then only despread the signal of this user, while the other spread-spectrum signals will remain spread over a large bandwidth. However, the orthogonal case differs in that the other spread-spectrum signals are canceled. Thus, within the information bandwidth the power of the desired user will be larger than the interfering power provided there are not too many interferers, and the desired signal can be extracted. However, interference occurs in the system due to this cross correlation among the spreading codes assigned to users. Unlike other multiple access wireless communication methods, code division multiple access interference is mainly from users within the same cell, rather than users in other cells.
CDMA-based systems have a soft capacity, meaning that there is no “hard” limit to the number of users in the network, as in a TDMA system. However, there are two main limiting factors to the resources in a WCDMA downlink, which are the transmission power and the channelization codes. It is desirable for the channelization codes to be orthogonal, thereby effectively suppressing the interference between the users and increasing the capacity. Furthermore, the channelization codes, which are organized in a code tree, ensure that the downlink channels transmitted in a cell are orthogonal, thus maintaining minimum interference and increasing the capacity of the system. However, the orthogonalized set of channelization codes in a code tree is limited. Thus, multiple code trees distinguish among themselves by their scrambling codes, which are pseudo-noise sequences. In the WCDMA downlink, a spreading sequence is generated by combining a scrambling sequence and a channelization sequence. The channelization sequence consists of a short channel code that is repeated many times. Some commonly used channelization codes are the Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor (OVSF) codes. These OVSF codes preserve the orthogonality between different physical channels. The scrambling codes are complex valued codes used with the channelization codes to scramble the downlink physical channel.
So, in each cell, there is at least one “primary” code tree and possibly “secondary” code trees, corresponding to “primary” and “secondary” scrambling codes for each code tree, respectively. The “secondary” scrambling codes are created in the same way as the “primary” scrambling codes, except having different seeds.
The problem with multiple code trees is that codes of different code trees are non-orthogonal, causing more interference than desired. This becomes really a problem since a single code tree will be a limiting factor. As understood by those skilled in the art, there are some common channels that have to be transmitted in the entire cell, and these belong, most likely, to one of the code trees, corresponding most likely to the “primary” scrambling codes. These common channels interfere heavily with the user dedicated channels that use other code trees. Moreover, these common channels are transmitted with high power since they have to be detected in the entire cell, hence increasing the interference. Hence, it would be desirable for all user dedicated channels to be orthogonal to these “high power” common channels, even those channels that don't fit in the “primary” code tree. What is needed is to overcome the limitation of a single code tree by creating and using multiple code trees that are at least partly orthogonal to each other to reduce/remove interference.